


Compulsion

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [118]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Compulsion, Gen, Mental Illness, OCD, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 06:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7746619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with cleanliness, then double, triple, quadrouple checking his weapons. It takes so much time he misses class. His grades suffer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compulsion

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece from Tumblr.
> 
> Warnings: Sam has OCD, which he struggles with. This is real OCD, not colloquial improper use of the term OCD. OCD is preventing Sam from living his life, as it currently stands.

Sam fucking _hates_  germs.

At first, he thinks it’s a pushback from his childhood. He lived in what, at times, was filth and squalor. They bled on each other and climbed through abandoned houses and the filthy woods, anything for a case. Sam’s leaving all that behind now, so maybe it makes sense that he’s pushing back on that too.

Except…he doesn’t take any joy from it. Not even the littlest spark of pleasure. Sure, it he feels the briefest moment of relief when he can assure himself that everything is clean. 

And then it’ll start over again. He’ll start worrying about how dirty it is, how there could be contaminations in the filth. And then he’ll have to start cleaning once more.

He scrubbed the kitchen floor so hard his hands bled several times now. He scalds his skin in hot water. He can’t stop.

And then the other compulsions start.

Sam keeps his apartment armed. He’s left behind hunting but he’s not stupid enough to think that hunting is done with him, so he keeps the apartment prepared, should something ever find him.

Except he seems to be _constantly_  checking to see if the defenses are up to scratch, if the knives are still there–nevermind where they would go–if his salt lines are still in place, if the shotgun filled with salt is still hidden under the loose floorboard.

He stops going to class sometimes, then more and more often, because he can’t leave his apartment. Too busy double and triple and quadruple checking his defenses. By the time he’s done with that, the filth will get to him, and he’ll be sucked in all over again.

He needs a neat, orderly, defensible home. He just never seems to get there, even when he _knows_  he’s there, that it’s illogical for him to keep feeling compelled to keep going, to check again, to clean one more time.

 It’s one of his professors who does it. She sends him four emails that he can’t acknowledge–it’s not that he doesn’t want to come to office hours, it’s that leaving his apartment is just too hard right then–before she just shows up at his door.

“The university lists your address,” she says by way of explanation. “Took some work to get, but we’re worried about you, Sam. Going to let me in?”

Sam does, wincing and fretting about her shoes on the clean floors, trying to stop himself from immediately running for the mop. “Tell me what’s going on,” she says.

And Sam does. It’s like a dam opens up, admitting to what’s going on, the constant need, never being satisfied, the compulsion to keep going.

“There are people you can talk to,” she says when he’s done. “I mean, me, for starters. But medical professionals. People who could take what you say and make a diagnosis out of it. Help you manage this. It’s something, Sam, and you need some help. I’d like to help you get it.”

Some part of Sam says no doctors, one more vestige of childhood. But he sighs. “Okay,” he says. “I need…I need you to help me. Get to. To whoever this person is.”

Sam is still absolutely aware of the dirt tracked in, minuscule as he knows it is, and the fact that she might have smudged the salt lines. But he also feels hope, the first truly good feeling he’s had in months now, and he seizes it with both hands.


End file.
